History Heartwarming / RiseOfTheGuardians

* A prequel comic made by one of the movie's creators has Pitch Black befriend a homeless child, and at one point the boy tells him that he's not scared of dying in some ways (e.g., peacefully in his sleep) but he is scared of dying in some violent, painful way. Decades later, Tooth tells Pitch that the boy is dead. While Pitch claims not to care, there is a hint of something else as he muses that since he, Pitch, didn't know about it, it means that the boy must have died without fear.

* Small in comparison, but Baby Tooth doing her job of reminding Jack what's important. To elaborate: right after Jack says him holding Baby Tooth only makes the little fairy cold and how Pitch was right when he said Jack makes a mess of everything, Baby Tooth climbs into Jack's hoodie and activates the tooth container, nodding and smiling to Jack, indicating that he is ready to find out who he was before, even though she has no idea what those memories contain, and those memories serve to prove he did do good.
** The memories themselves show how Jack died, to save his little sister. Jack's response is immense joy that he saved her, and his realization is that Manny really does see something in him.
* A meta example. Fans of the movie love it so much that they've made a project for a book called ''Book of Belief''. The goal is to send copies of it to the Dreamworks Animation Studios in hopes of inspiring them to create a sequel to Rise of the Guardians. Search "Book of Belief" in the Tumblr search engine and just look at how many entries there are.

*** Definitely more heartwarming. They're like siblings who are constantly at each others throats, [[HypocriticalHeartwarming but if someone ''else'' takes a swipe at one of them...]]

** It's his excited bouncing (reminiscent of [[Disney/{{Tangled}} Rapunzel's]] excited bouncing) that can get to you.

* [[spoiler: "Can you see me?" For the first time in 300 years, someone other than his fellow myths can see, hear, and interact with Jack.]]

** There's also North's remark about Jamie. [[spoiler:"Jack... He sees you."]] It's clear that he's just as happy for him.
** From just before that, [[spoiler:Jack restoring Jamie's faith in Bunnymund. Note that Jack and Bunnymund have been at odds the whole movie. Watching Jack selflessly act on Bunnymund's behalf, knowing that Jamie cannot see him will bring a tear to your eye.]]
** And Bunnymund's reaction later is definitely heartwarming. [[spoiler:Jamie is initially quite surprised at Bunny's diminished form, leading Bunnymund to assume that Jack told the boy to point it out just to be a punk. But when Jamie explains that Jack is the reason Jamie still believes in the Easter Bunny, Bunnymund is speechless, touched, and honestly rather tearful.]]

** This is also a poignant moment for Jack that bluntly foreshadows his inner nature [[spoiler:and ascension to Guardian status]] in just the right way; when he figures out that none of the current Guardians really interact with the children under their charge. North and Bunnymund both only make their presence known once a year while Tooth and Sandy - although operating every day...do it at a distance and en masse. Jack calls them out on it, and right then, you see that the children genuinely matter to him and some part of him knows his place with his charges.

** For a beat at the end, [[spoiler: after Pitch is defeated and he watches the Guardians and children throwing snowballs,]] you can seen Bunnymund hopping over to little Sophie and helping her make a snowball of her own. D'aww...

* At the end of the movie, [[spoiler:Jamie runs up and gives Jack a hug. Jack is frozen in surprise for a moment before he smiles and returns it. It's literally the first time something like that has happened, and you can tell it means a lot.]]

*** If you pay attention later [[spoiler: you'll notice that his sister does it, too. Watch carefully in one of Jack's memories, when he has the antlers.]] Adorable.

* Relatively small one, but [[spoiler: in the ending credit run, all the helpers; the mini fairies, the eggs, the elves and the yetis are all helping the sleeping children back home- trying to cover for them. The capper? When Phil notices Jamie has a book on his kind and ''signs'' it as a gesture to believe.]]

* The giant snowball fight when [[spoiler: the Guardians and the children have defeated Pitch. Made even better by Sandman's dream sand creations floating through the background.]]

* [[spoiler: Sandman's return. He creates a hat out of sand and tips it to the children... and Jamie salutes him back.]] Plus the other Guardians' joy over his revival is adorable.
* Jack is still a bit iffy about being a Guardian, but when they arrive at the Tooth Fairy's palace and it's being attacked by Pitch's minions, he ''immediately'' goes to help them. Actually, his entire relationship with Baby Tooth is unbelievably sweet- [[spoiler: when Pitch demands Jack hand over his staff in exchange for Baby Tooth (and is quite clearly hurting her in his hand), Jack doesn't even hesitate before handing it over for her.]]

* [[spoiler:Jack saving his sister. Doubles as a massive TearJerker, especially considering that ''she watched him die''.]]
* Bunnymund [[spoiler:standing in front of the children and telling him he'll protect them in the climax...despite being the size of an ordinary rabbit at that point.]]
** For that matter, [[spoiler:Jamie stepping forward and saying that he'll protect the guardians... followed by Cupcake and the rest of their friends stepping up, too]].

* One of the prequel comics involves Monty (the boy with glasses) having a sleep over at Jamie's house. Earlier Jamie had [[spoiler: almost seen Jack while playing pretend and ended up finding some of his hair]] (Jamie thought that it was Bigfoot's) and put it into a book of stuff like that. He then tells Monty about [[spoiler: various close encounters he'd had with Tooth, North (he lost a tooth on Christmas) and Bunny. Specifically, he almost saw North and took a picture of Bunny's eggs' footprints.]] He thinks that Monty will think that it's weird, but Monty turns out to have a story of his own. The previous fall he had been attacked by a rabid dog when he was cornered at a lake. [[spoiler:To his surprise, the ice froze over creating a safe path away from the dog for him. It then turns out that Jack had saved Monty and was listening in on Jamie's story; before he leaves he leaves a little frost on the windows]] and Jamie decides to add a new picture to his book. Did I mention that the entire story is available on the wiki?

** It's hard too tell if it's the fact that Bunnymund made a similar low blow earlier (possibly an hour or less earlier, really) makes this more or less heartwarming.